2013 will be remembered for many events, many of which illustrate how much we rely on technology, whether that includes scientific research or entertainment and how much information technology networks have impact. While 2013 confirmed technology’s importance, what does 2014 have in store for enterprises in Qatar? Marcus Jewell, Vice President, EMEA, Brocade, outlines the top technology trends that Qatari enterprises should watch out for in 2014.
Marcus Jewell, Vice President, EMEA, Brocade
Network Functions Virtualisation and Software-Defined “Everything” will gain momentum – In the Middle East and in Qatar, exploration of Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined technologies like networks, virtualisation, data centres, storage and infrastructure, will evolve from being just for research. As an industry, we are seeing a shift toward open, more flexible, efficient, highly programmable and elastic network infrastructure solutions with key initiatives such as OpenStack and the Open Daylight Project as well as disruptive technologies that will ultimately benefit organisations. At the same time, we expect NFV to gain prominence and drive new revenue opportunities for service providers in Qatar by pulling managed services into the cloud, drastically reducing costs and increasing service agility. Although it may still be too early for full Software-Defined Networking (SDN), a key decision making criteria for infrastructure will be to ensure that infrastructure supports SDN going forward. Open architecture will be key to this strategy.
Trimming the fat in data centres and cloud architectures – Technology disruptions are forcing us to fundamentally rethink how networks should be built, designed, deployed and operated in data centres. Networks are more critical than ever to deliver applications and we believe fabrics will play a pivotal role to accelerate this transformation, with drastic improvements in network efficiency, resource utilisation and performance. The explosion of data is forcing an end to the traditional three-tier network and with Gartner, the information technology research and advisory firm, predicting that by 2014, 80% of network traffic will flow from server to server, we expect to see Qatari enterprises continuing to flatten their networks. They will benefit from more powerful and resilient networks, while ensuring that the networks can massively grow capacity on demand without disruptions. Even at the age of 40, Ethernet will continue to revolutionise networking.
Clouds loom large – According to Gartner, the push for more personal cloud technologies will lead to a shift toward services and away from devices. In addition, a study by 451 Research, forecasts that the worldwide cloud computing market is expected to grow at a 36% compounded annual growth rate through 2016, reaching a market size of USD 19.5 billion by 2016. These figures demonstrate that Chief Information Officers are aware of the new business models, consumption models, user expectations, security issues and privacy concerns associated with the cloud and they will use the cloud to drive growth and innovation throughout their organisations. In 2014, we expect the cloud to develop into a key business enabler and as private clouds mature, the desire to leverage public cloud elasticity will grow.
The Internet revolution continues unabated – Robert Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, states that the power of a network increases by the square of the number of nodes connected to it. According to IDC, an American market research, analysis and advisory firm specialising in information technolog,y the total “Internet of Things” market including technologies and services will be USD 8.9 trillion by 2020, with 212 billion devices connected to the Internet. Although concerns over security and interoperability with devices still remains, the Internet of Things is set to revolutionise industries such as healthcare, retail and transportation with the movement gaining traction in 2014. As a result, Qatari enterprises need to start studying how the Internet of Things will affect their business.
Big data becomes too big to handle – “Bring Your Own Device” and the explosion of data, especially video content, are causing many new challenges as the amount of data becomes too big to handle in terms of getting value from it and in defining a strategy. Enterprises in Qatar will go back to basics in 2014 and ask fundamental questions of their data centre infrastructures as they look to deal with unprecedented data volumes – What are the objectives? Are we collecting the correct data? How can we use this to enable change in our business? Qatari companies who cannot answer these questions adequately will struggle. Furthermore, we expect to see one or two significant cases of network shutdowns caused by data overload.